


Dig

by minkit



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Horror, Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-12 04:14:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29004306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minkit/pseuds/minkit
Summary: She just kept digging...
Kudos: 2





	Dig

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote another nosleep story and even if only like a few people read this on AO3 like my last one, I like collecting my work here. If you DO read this however, I hope you enjoy it. I quite liked writing it. It was fun!

Recently, I switched companies that I work for. I didn’t hate my last company, but everything is just  _ better  _ at the new one. Better pay, more time off, better leave, more agreeable hours… I was ecstatic when I got the offer. The only downside was that it was an hour out of town down a small, two-lane highway. But even that wasn’t that big of a deal. I have a good car and gas is relatively cheap at the moment in my area. An hour of driving enjoying the country? There are worse things.

The company I work for is your regular 9 to 5, meaning in order to make sure I get there on time plus a stop at the local 7/11 for a cup of coffee and a breakfast pastry, I usually leave my house at about 7:30AM. It’s a lonely drive down the country highway I quickly came to find. Not many people actually have to use that road on a day to day basis. Sometimes I wonder why, but I just figure not many people have to travel between the two towns. I’ll pass a few cars along the way, but there’s never any traffic and I can enjoy having my window rolled down as I sip at my coffee and turn up the classic rock station as loud as I could handle it. 

Being in the country, most of what I pass by as I drive is empty fields. There’s a few houses along the way, ones tucked back behind trees. Barrels of hay are lined up, some fields hold cows, probably belonging to one of the people along the highway. The trees had been trimmed back, but in the distance a full forest extended out into some hills. Really, it’s quite a beautiful sight.

Anyway, there’s this one portion of my trip to work where there’s no houses, no cows, just fields extending out as far as the eye can see. And there’s this one tree in the field, dead and barren and probably should’ve been long chopped down. And it was this one morning, about a week after I started at my new company, that it finally struck me about the woman.

Every morning, at the exact time of day I was passing by on my way to work, a woman with long black hair would be walking directly towards the tree. 

I know why it didn’t strike me as odd at first. A woman walking towards a tree? So what, big deal. But I had noticed her, in the back of my mind, every single day and that’s what was so weird. Why was she walking there every day?

Still, I shook it off. And then I noticed something else weird about it. Every night on the way back home, as I passed by that exact location again, she was still there. Except this time she wasn’t walking to the tree, she wasn’t even walking away from the tree.

She was sitting there and she was digging.

I’m going about 65MPH down the highway whenever I pass, so I only get a brief moment to glimpse at her on my way home, but the image sticks in my mind and it makes me curious. The next day on the way to work, she’s walking to the tree. On the way home from work, she’s there, sitting at the trunk of the tree, digging. 

And then I notice she’s digging with her hands, her fingers clawing at the earth beneath her, her black hair hanging down in front of her face. But each time I only get the quickest glimpse before I’m far down the road and she’s out of my sight. The thought of it still brings a sharp shiver shooting down my spine, a tingle at the base of my back, and a cold unease that creeps over my entire being.

The image of her wouldn’t leave my head for some reason, and each day I went to work, an uneasy feeling settled heavy in the pit of my stomach as I passed that section of road. On the way to work, she’d be walking to the tree and on the way home, she’d be sitting there, digging. She just kept digging, but she never seemed to get anywhere. 

It went that way for weeks. I’d close my eyes and she would be there, digging, behind my eyelids. I’d doze off at my computer at work and there she would be, digging. I’d see a black haired woman walking in front of me at the grocery store and she’d fall to the ground and start digging. 

Digging, digging, digging… 

I wanted to know what she was digging for. Unfortunately for me, I was soon able to find out.

A few weeks into my new job, I ended up having to stay late to help get a huge project done on time. It wasn’t a big deal, I didn’t mind because so far they had treated me nothing but well. By the time I finished, it was a few hours later, about 8PM. The sun was still up since it was summer and wouldn’t be setting for almost an hour, so I at least still had daylight on my side.

Before I went home, I stopped through a drive-thru and grabbed a quick bite to eat and was on my way, cranking my music and putting on my sunglasses as the sun was going to be shining directly into my eyes, and I drove.

I was happy for the half ride back, singing my music, munching on fries, completely forgetting about the digging woman and ready to enjoy my weekend. But that’s when there was a loud  _ POP  _ and my car skidded across the road.

My heart lurched and thankfully my knowledge of everything I’d learned way back in driver’s ed kicked in. I managed to get my car to slow down and pull off to the side of the road. I took a moment to calm myself before turning off the car and climbing out. I went around to the backside and groaned at the sight of a popped tire. I had no replacement and even if I did, no experience of changing my own tire that would’ve made me feel I could secure a new one in place without it coming flying off as I drove. 

I quickly went to grab my phone from my front seat, but as I did, I realized that I had forgotten to plug it in to charge and it was completely dead. I was frustrated as I plugged my phone in, especially knowing that my phone was incredibly slow to charge. It was old and I needed a new one, but could never get around to it. That’s when I realized where I was.

I was only 100 yards away from the tree.

I glanced out my window and sure enough, there it was, looming and large and dead in the distance, but more than that, there the woman was, still sitting on her knees and digging into the earth as if it was her only purpose in life. My heart pounded in my chest at the thought of what I was about to do, but I tried to tell myself how ridiculous I was being. It was just a woman and she probably had a reason for all the digging she did. In any case, I needed to contact a tow-truck, and I wasn’t willing to wait on this country road as the sun slowly set to leave me in complete darkness when I had another option.

So I shut off my car, got out, and started walking towards the woman. 

It wasn’t hard to get past the fence that blocked the field from the road. It was just one of those wooden ones and clearly not taken care of as it was all falling to pieces as I got over to it. I easily climbed over it and into the dead grass that seemed to make up most of the field. There were roots and pieces of wood covering almost the entire ground. I was careful of my steps, not wanting to step into any cow-patties, just in case. 

I got closer to the woman as the sun hung low in the sky. Her hair as dark as midnight was a mess. Knots and tangles and even pieces of dry grass clung to it. I figured it must be because she’d been… digging all day. I was about ten feet away when I stopped, noticing that where her fingers met the ground, there was no hole, no signs of digging. 

In the back of my mind, I thought about how weird this was. This woman had been digging all day and not just all day but every day for weeks, in this exact spot. Digging and never stopping so how could there not be a hole? Was she just moving her hands along the earth, miming the look of it? But for what purpose? 

I tried to shake the thought from my head because it really isn’t my business and I just need a phone to get my car picked up and get the hell home.

“Excuse me? Ma’am?” I called out to her, hesitant to get any closer, not knowing if there was something wrong with her or if I was just being a judgey asshole. But I figured better safe than sorry. I did notice, however, that her hands stopped moving as I called out to her. “Sorry to bother you but I got a flat and was wondering if you had a phone I could borrow.”

I felt as if everything had stopped moving in that moment. It felt as if the very oxygen that surrounded me was sucked up, creating a thick and heavy weight that was pushing down on me, as if I was being suffocated. And then the woman slowly turned to face me.

There was a black void where her face should be.

I screamed, my entire body erupting in goosebumps and I turned, trying to flee, but I tripped over a root and went tumbling to the ground. I could feel my skin on the palm of my hands tear, a sharp pain throbbing throughout my entire arm as I struggled to get up.

And when I did manage to get up, I ran. I ran without looking back. I ran all the way to my car and climbed in and slammed the door shut behind me, my heart pounding in my chest. When I managed to get myself to look out the window, the woman was gone, nowhere to be seen.

“You imagined it, Peter, you just imagined it.” I murmured to myself, trying to calm down. I then turned back on my car, locked my doors, and just waited for my phone to charge enough to make a call and get the hell out of here. 

Now here is where these stories would normally end, but this isn’t the end of my story just yet and boy do I wish it had been. 

I tried to forget about her. Whenever I passed that area of road, I always made myself look away. I didn’t want to see her, didn’t want to know if she was still there. I tricked myself into thinking that she wasn’t, but every time I passed for the next few weeks, she was still there, at the corner of my eye. 

And she was still digging. 

Her face, or lack thereof, plagued my mind. No matter what I was doing, I saw her staring at me, a faceless black hole that creeped into the very essence of my being. She’d be there when I was awake, working at my desk, a reflection in the glass of my computer screen. I’d see her at the end of the grocery aisle, her long black hair trailing over her shoulders, just an extension of the void that was her face. 

She was in my nightmares and so was that damn tree. In my nightmares, I’d be walking towards her, calling out to her, asking her if she had a phone I could borrow and she’d turn to look at me just like what happened in reality, but this time before I could run she’d grip my wrist with ice cold, pale fingers and a sound would echo through my mind.

_ Dig… dig… dig… _

  
  
  


It was a couple of weeks of this and just over two months into my new job that I’d finally had enough of this. I was sick from the lack of sleep and growing less and less scared of the faceless woman that haunted my dreams.

That was when I decided what I needed to do. I needed to dig. 

One morning, so early that the sun was barely peeking over the horizon, I tossed a shovel that I’d just picked up from Lowe’s into my car and drove. I drove as quickly as I could without getting pulled over and when I got to that damned tree, the sun was finally up and the woman was nowhere to be seen. 

I pulled off to the side of the road and grabbed the shovel from the trunk of my car. I hopped over the fence and quickly and determinedly walked towards the tree. I knew the exact spot the woman had been digging, it was locked into my mind and I shoved the shovel down into the earth and began to dig.

The country sun was hot as it shined down on me. My shirt clung to my skin and I could feel the sun burning me the higher it went but I didn’t care. I continued to press the shovel into the earth and toss it away, the image of the woman burned into my irises and the whisper of her saying  _ dig  _ echoing through my mind. 

And then my shovel hit something. 

I paused, suddenly nervous and wondering if I should really be doing this, but I had come all this way and gotten this far, and I was going to see it through.

I tossed my shovel aside and dropped to my knees and did the rest with my hands. It took less than a minute before what I was digging was revealed and I could feel my breath stick in my throat and a scream perched on the tip of my tongue.

Bones. I was digging up human bones. And there, staring at me, was a human skull with voids for eyes and I just knew who it was right away.

It was that woman. That woman who, for months, had sat here digging away without ever getting anywhere, trying to unbury herself and clinging to me in my dreams when she couldn’t do it herself. 

I went home and called in a tip anonymously to the police. I didn’t need them suspecting me for it. How else was I to explain what I was doing digging in that area if I didn’t already know a body was there? But I followed the news closely. It turns out that it was a young woman named Alexandra who had gone missing only months before I started my new job. Her family had been looking the entire time, hoping that she was still out there somewhere. 

I feel sorry that this was the news they received, but I’m at least glad I could help put their suffering of not knowing to an end.

I’m also glad that I could finally have a face to replace the black void that had haunted me in my nightmares for a month.


End file.
